The Niche
Creation of iPS pig cells could bring on humanized porkers
Posted for David Cyranoski; Cross-posted from The Great Beyond Researchers in China have made pluripotent stem cells from a pig. The cells could be useful for making humanized pig organs for transplant to humans, pig models of human disease useful for testing drugs, and for improving pig farming productivity and nutritional value. Lei Xiao, head of the research group at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences where the research was done, admits that none of these will happen for the next several years. But his creation in pigs of induced pluripotent stem (iPS)-cells which share with embryonic stem cells the